[Sermon composed for the Sunday broadcast at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, Phoenix AZ (https://www.stmarysphoenix.org/online) for The Second Sunday in Lent, February 28, 2021.]
✠ In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen
What does it mean to step out in faith? We hear people say that a lot, and when we hear it the speaker generally means that the subject of that exhortation, whether it is themselves or those to whom they are directly speaking or to a referenced third party (or any combination thereof), is called to take a chance. Literally, a chance, a dice-roll with actual odds that the promise held out as the reward for taking the chance actually will not come to be. Less frequently, while the end-result has been guaranteed, the recipient of the challenge has little to no proof to back up the guarantee. This one implies a level of trust which is more closely related to the faith of a religious context.
We have heard the interpretation before; to get to the original sense of the Greek πιστεύω (I believe) or πίστις (faith), simply substitute “believe”, “belief”, and “faith” with “trust”. Let us try it out for size, shall we?
From the Nicene Creed: “We trust in ONE God, creator of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.”[1]
It gives us twenty-first century Anglos a bit of a new angle, doesn’t it? Well, our readings today are all about trust. Not just any old trust but that trust in the One God who has made everything, us included. It is a trust which based on a claim, an absolute, a promise, with little more than a “Because I said so!” makes those called drop everything and walk along a scary and dangerous path.
So imagine if you will, a stranger out of the blue across the country calls you up and offers you a wonderful opportunity to better your station in life if you just pick up stakes, move across country, and adopt a new culture with a quite different ethical code. I feel safe in wagering that most of us here if we did not consign the call immediately to the expiring car warranty or social security scam pile would put the caller to the test, and by test, I mean a third degree that the CIA and NSA would balk at using. Claims and promises like that require such a high level of trust that is difficult and even foolhardy to give.
The problem we have here is that such a request is before us today. We hear in Psalm 95, “Oh that today you would hearken to his voice!”[4] Listen to the next verse, however: “Harden not your hearts as your forebears did in the wilderness.”[5] The Epistle to the Hebrews makes a lengthy exegesis of that psalm. Regarding hearing God’s request, the Epistle tells us, “Again, He sets a certain day, ‘Today,’”[6] to answer that request. Today, we have a challenge from Jesus that, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”[7] The promise Our Lord offers is that, “Those who lose their life for [Jesus’] sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”[8] By “lose their life” our Lord means to give it up, to give up the old way, to give up the focus on self, to give up on “looking out for number one.” It is a serious demand, and it requires a trust so absolute that it should make us stop, take note, and think about it.
As we think about taking up the new life in Christ, let us look at our Old Testament lesson.[9] Abraham had a promise that he would become a mighty nation, that his wife Sarah would be the ancestress of kings. There was, however, a difficulty to overcome. First, as other parts of Genesis stated,[10] and as St. Paul in the Epistle today pointed out, [11] Abraham and Sarah were old, past the time when they could bear children and past the time anyone sanely even wants to have children. Still, despite their better judgements, both Abraham and Sarah both put their faith, their trust in the Lord their God.
Jesus in the Gospel lesson today[12] likewise asked for the trust of His disciples, asking for something even more difficult, to live a life of self-denial, to take up the cross daily, and to follow Him.[13] That’s a lot to ask for when you think about it. Let us cast it in terms of our cultural backdrop. We have all heard of the American Dream, an ethos defined by various dictionaries and encyclopedias as the idea that through hard work and perseverance any American can provide well for him or herself and enjoy upward mobility (whatever THAT is). On sober reflection, we see this ethos manifests as everyone slaving away for their own interests at the cost of interpersonal relationships for the infrequently realized goal of getting rich. While on the surface it presumes an egalitarian playing field where everyone’s efforts to better their own lot indirectly benefits the efforts of others, it has become a Darwinian struggle of survival of the fittest.[14] In contrast with the American Dream, we see that the injunction to follow Jesus’ lead in caring for the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, engaging frequently throughout the day with God the Father, actually trusting God to provide for us while we do what we need to do, takes us in a different direction altogether. There is still hard work, but there is also a fundamental change of focus from one’s self to God, and to God’s beloved, our neighbours.
We are called not just to love our neighbours, but to love God. We cannot love God without loving our neighbours. And we cannot do that without actually trusting God. So many of us have trust issues (and for good reason), but when we focus those issues on our relationship with God, it becomes deadly. Why is it deadly? In God is life, but apart from God is corruption and death. Jesus as Man was handed over to Death as a ransom for our sins and as God defeated Death to deliver us from its power. It was Jesus’ trust in God’s plan that won for us salvation despite the horrible price paid. Our choice, for God always gives us a choice as love does not control or compel, is whether to follow Jesus and to trust in God’s reconciliation of us to Himself and in that find life, or to reject the offer of reconciliation and continue in an eternity of death and corruption.
We all eventually must put our trust, our faith, somewhere. If it is in ourselves, it is a dead end. On our own we have no power to add more life to ourselves, but what we have dwindles until, to quote J.R.R. Tolkein, we become a “mere spirit of malice that gnaws itself in the shadows, but cannot again grow or take shape.”[15] If our trust is in God, then in His presence we are continually refreshed and renewed, having life, and having it abundantly.
For those of us who have already chosen the path of life, let us renew this trust and not lose our first love.[16] For those of us who have not, who do not yet trust God, will we not make the choice to lose our old lives, our self-centred myopia for the sake of Christ and the Gospel and in the long run win a new one?[17] In the big picture, isn’t it worth it?
✠ Through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, Saviour save us. Amen.
Jesus Calls Peter and Andrew, unknown provenance.
[1] The Nicene Creed, Ecumenical Councils of Nicaea I (A.D. 325) and Constantinople I (A.D. 381) [2] Rom. 4.13-25 [3] Rom. 4.22 [4] Ps. 95.7b [5] Ps. 95.8a [6] Heb. 4.7 [7] St. Mk. 8.34 [8] Ibid. 8.35 [9] Gen. 17.1-7, 15-16 [10] Gen. 17.17, 18.12 [11] Rom. 4.19 [12] St. Mk. 8.31-38 [13] St. Mk. 8.34 [14] Conversely, the Marxist ideal of everyone for the benefit of the common good and the distribution of the product of that effort equally has proved equally bankrupt, having frozen people into a “who cares” mentality where stagnation became the rule of the day, but that is not our cultural experience. [15] Tolkein, J.R.R., “The Last Debate,” The Lord of the Rings, Bk. 5, Ch. 9. [16] Rev. 2.4 [17] St. Mk. 3.35